Analogs of Precambrian microbial communities formed de novo in Caucasian mineral water aquifers

作者：Д. Г. Заварзина, А. А. Maslov, Alexander Y. Merkel, Н. А. Харитонова, Alexandra A. Klyukina, E. I. Baranovskaya, Elena A. Baydariko, E. G. Potapov, Kseniya S. Zayulina, A. Yu. Bychkov, N. A. Chernyh, E. A. Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Sergey N. Gavrilov · 发表于：mBio · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1128/mbio.02831-24 · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Methane Hydrates and Related Phenomena、Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology、Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies

ABSTRACT The microbiome of deep continental aquifers is considered the most slowly evolving part of the biosphere. The Yessentukskoye Mineral Water Basin (YMWB), located in the pre-Caucasus region, contains three closely spaced but distinct aquifers, the Upper Cretaceous, the Lower Cretaceous, and the Upper Jurassic, which represent unique objects for subsurface biosphere research due to gas-hydrogeochemical and thermal anomalies of the area. We analyzed the geological and hydrogeochemical parameters of the three aquifers and a recharge area of the YMWB and investigated their microbial communities using metagenomic and cultivation-based approaches within a long-term survey. Correlation analysis of the obtained data revealed stable and highly stratified microbial communities inhabiting four distinct ecosystems. Their structure and the metabolic traits of their prokaryotic populations were similar to those presumed to have dominated the Earth’s biosphere during several critical periods of its evolutionary history, that is, the Early Archean, the period of banded iron formations accumulation, and the Great Oxidation Event. Among the YMWB strata, the Upper Jurassic aquifer, supersaturated with CO 2 , influenced by magmatic activity, and highly enriched with thermophilic autotrophic hydrogenotrophic acetogens, turned out to be the first described modern ecosystem based on the primary production by a process predicted to support the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). The charac...